Well Read Column by Robert Weibezahl

Novelist Richard Price is also a successful screenwriter, counting such films as The Color of Money, Sea of Love and the HBO show "The Wire" among his credits, so it is not surprising that his books are heavy on snappy, streetwise dialogue. His latest, Lush Life, is no exception. Set on the Lower East Side of New York, it is a sprawling social narrative cloaked in the guise of a...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

Gritty streets, grim housing projects, grim, edgy lives teetering on desperation, hope writhing in hopelessness yes, you're back in Dempsy, New Jersey, Richard Price's turf and the setting for his novels Clockers and Freedomland. Ray Mitchell, the homeboy hero of Samaritan, has returned to his childhood haunts after a checkered career teaching school, driving a cab, kicking a coke habit and...

Inspired by the tragic 1994 Susan Smith incident in North Carolina, Richard Price sought to understand the social and cultural effects of a heinous crime cruelly exploited by a headline-thirsty media and insensitive political opportunists without regard for truth on a mid-sized American city fraught with racial tensions. The result of his curiosity is his latest and most accomplished novel, ...

Audio Column by Sukey Howard

Brenda Martin, a small white woman, bruised, shock-strained, tells police that she was carjacked near the projects by a black man then adds that her four-year-old boy was asleep in the back seat. Visions of Susan Smith come to mind, but the complex story that unfolds in Freedomland (6 hours) is a far, fascinating cry from Smith's sad circumstances. Author Richard Price sets his new novel in...